Are there female orchestra conductors in history?

Question:

Are there female orchestra conductors in history?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: The Baltimore Symphony's new music director, Marin Alsop, is the first female conductor to head a major U.S. orchestra.

Composer-conductor-educator Nadia Boulanger – who became the first woman to lead the leading symphony orchestras in New York and Boston in the late 1930s – and conductor-opera director Sarah Caldwell, who founded an opera company in Boston in the 1950s and was the first female conductor at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1976.

Only about 18 percent of U.S. conducting doctorates were awarded to women in recent years, according to the New York Times.